hegemony and imperialism in the international system - Clacso

NEW WORLDWIDE HEGEMONY. ALTERNATIVES FOR CHANGE ANDSOCIAL MOVEMENTS
S h a k e s p e a r e ’s reflection, when he makes one of his characters say, “Yo u
take my life when you do take the means whereby I live,” seems highly
fitting. The predatory nature of capitalism, exacerbated in its current
phase, has led precisely to this point: depriving three quarters of
humanity of their livelihood and destroying the environment that made
it possible for human life to appear and maintain itself on this planet.
A civilization which in the name of eff i c i e n c y, rationality and progress
slowly and silently carries out the biggest genocide known in the history
of humanity. Every year near forty million people, most of them children,
die of hunger and curable diseases. In other words, in just one
year capitalism annihilates more than half the number of victims
caused by the Second World War over six years. The large social
movements that today challenge this situation do so on the basis of the
conviction that other world is not only possible but also necessary and
urgent. I shall attempt, in the following pages, to set forth a brief summary
of the debates held within the framework of this event. The
emphasis will be placed both on the main areas of agreement and on
the issues under dispute.
A new phase?
There is an extremely wide consensus in the sense that the world
imperialist system has entered a new phase in its evolution. This transition
didn’t escape the notice of its spokespeople and ideological representatives,
who hurried to endow this new stage with a name that
underlined the dazzling features of its appearance while carefully hiding
its deepest essence: globalization. The more striking aspects of this
process seem to substantiate the idea of an increasing globalization of
productive processes and of the operation of the diverse markets.
Nevertheless, the scope of this phenomenon has been extraordinarily
exaggerated and nowadays the available research already demonstrates
that the much trumpeted globalization –which the French correctly
call mondialization, something like “worldization,” to allude to
the will-related, not at all natural, elements that boost it– is a phenomenon
that acquires a different solidity depending on what is being
talked about. The international financial system has, no doubt, been
1 We have examined this subject in Tiempos violentos. Neoliberalismo, globalización y desigualdad en
América Latina, 2004 (1999), which includes a detailed bibliography on the issue.
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